


can i stay here for a while (i don’t know how i even used to be alive)

by Waypaststrange (moonbeatblues)



Series: full of field and stars, you carried all of time [5]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, inspired entirely by swimming pool by emmy the great, it got into my head at one am and here we are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 01:40:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15426246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/Waypaststrange
Summary: in which victoria is (from someplace) colder, and rachel is (somewhere) much warmer





	can i stay here for a while (i don’t know how i even used to be alive)

**Author's Note:**

> title and. entire motivation from swimming pool by emmy the great  
> what can i say, summer’s my favorite season

You met in the summer, with the sun sending the asphalt into shimmers of roiling black.  
It was the first year you’d really had to yourself, the first season out from under Mother’s eye, the time to be baptized in that West Coast wash of heat and let your blood melt.

You’re not exactly sure why you’re invited— you’re far from old friends out here and you have the barbs of a choya, visible from space, the kind that rip you up when you pull them out. It’s a matter of family pride, to draw blood.

  
You drink lukewarm beer and let Taylor drag you around and you _burn,_ the way you only can the first time around.  
It’s slow on your skin, and the sun is close to setting when you really start to feel it, feverish in the way you used to get when you were little, so sick you needed ice baths, so sick you’d wake up with bags of saline emptying out into the crook of your elbow.

There aren’t so many people here, now, and Taylor whistles when the press of her fingertips into your shoulder doesn’t fade for a good three seconds.  
“ _God_ , Vic, have you never been in the sun before?”

 _No_.  
You say nothing.

“Lemme go see if Rachel has any aloe or something,” and she’s off. You watch the shadows on the water shift with a sick sort of serenity.  
Rachel. You hadn’t even heard her name until now. You suppose parties are like that, here.

Taylor comes back out, a little sheepish.  
“She’s looking for some right now.” She curls her toes with a crack on the cement.  
“Listen, I have to go. I’ll meet you back at the dorms?”

You look over the slipping rims of your sunglasses. Taylor’s the type of person you should keep around— she latches on to other people easy, like a remora. You wonder if she’s more scared of you, or of Rachel. “Sure.”  
—  
The inside of Rachel’s house is so clean you can almost hear the countertops ringing. She pads into the kitchen with the easy grace of someone who might be immune to nerves, and you inhale sharply through your teeth.

You have the distinct feeling of looking upon a Greek goddess. Rachel’s all long, honey-blonde hair and high cheekbones, eyes like a deer— not afraid, but too big and too dark to look at for long.  
And _god_ , her voice.  
“You’re Victoria, right?” Your name’s never sounded like that in someone’s mouth.  
She sounds a little drunk, but then again, you are too. Somehow it doesn’t detract from the vibe. Like she’s a little blurry at the edges, not quite real.

“Yeah.” Ever the conversationalist.

“Uh, there’s not much left, but i found some aloe vera.” She hands you the bottle. “Bathroom’s first on the left down the hall. I’m gonna grab another drink.”

You breath out slow with her retreating footsteps. There’s a lot that’s nicer about the west coast— you’ve thought a lot about the girls here, so far from home that you don’t have the same cold, painful fear at the back of your skull and so pretty you almost feel okay looking, because how could you _not_.  
It’s easier here, but you didn’t think you’d be this close to one.  
—  
There’s no one else out back when you return, and it’s dark. You blot out most of the porch light for a moment, and you have to squint to see Rachel in the water, with her hair fanning out like a man o’ war, silent. Radiant.

The air is cool and heavy, and there’s something in the way she’s watching you from the pool that makes you cross to the edge, cement still sun-warm under your thighs when you swing your legs over the side.  
She goes under for a long moment, and then Rachel’s right in front of you with that honey-blonde hair down in a dark sheet.  
“I haven’t seen you around before.” She says. Not a question, but expecting a reason. Like it’s inevitable that you’d be here, like you took your sweet time.

You feel like you should be whispering.  
“I haven’t been here long.” You can’t quite look her in the eyes, with her looking up at you like this. It’s too close, her head tilted up in weird reverence and little eddies from her movements trapped between you.

She hums lowly and hoists herself up to sit beside you, water climbing up your calves for a moment. She has this heavy aura, like a gravitational field. “There’s not much to see.”

“I dunno.” You don’t talk like this. You’re not used to being pulled by a greater force. “It’s nicer than home.” _Don’t talk about home, dumbass._

She laughs. “Taylor told me you were from out east. Pretty different, huh?”

 _Yes_. “Yeah.” You get quieter. “Better.”

She goes quiet, too.  
“That’s good,” Her feet kick out, like a reflex, in the water. Her voice rasps like something old and hollow when she speaks again.  


“When you live here, this place is kinda like a tar pit. You don’t really notice you’re sinking until you can’t see out anymore.”

You don’t know what that means. You know very few things.  
But when Rachel turns to look at you for a long moment, eyes like darkly blooming flowers, you stare back.  
When she leans in you kiss her back, and you learn that Rachel tastes like beer, and chlorine, and the sun, and that the sting from sunburn can be nice when it’s someone else’s hands. Colder from the water, surer, pressing their thumbs in like you’re clay.

  
Looking back, that’s when you started to sink, too.

**Author's Note:**

> @seafleece on tumblr, @quetzalcoatlmundi for writing  
> come say hi!


End file.
